June 29

The picture on the right is of a gecko which was visiting the hospital. They are common here and often come indoors. I did not take the picture on the left - I downloaded it! - but we were unable to get a good picture of these birds when they were visiting us because they hid up in the trees. It's Ross' Turaco, a large colorful bird which only lives in Africa. It's not apparent in this picture, but when we saw them in person, the undersides of their wings appeared to be red. Several of them like to visit the guava tree on our property.

Spent all day working on Lucas' payroll spreadsheet and still not even close to finished - I should not have let him leave before he finished this project! ;) But he's headed back to the U.S. now.

I've been observing some of the work that people do here and how they do it. Yesterday and today, there was a man trimming a very large but partially dead jacaranda tree in front of my apartment - with a machete. It was slow work. That poor man needed a chain saw in the worst way. Most mornings I see a woman hoeing in the garden below my apartment, while her baby is strapped to her back. I am not sure who I feel more sorry for, the woman or the baby. Lastly, Lisa was telling Lucas and I about a man who works near Kumbya making his living sitting on a pile of rocks. He hits them with a hammer all day long, making smaller rocks out of the medium size rocks, then he sells the smaller rocks. We don't even ask felons to do that kind of work in the U.S. anymore. Some of these people work very hard for very little money. Reportedly, the nurses at the hospital only earn about US$50/month, and I expect that manual laborers earn quite a bit less than that.

Occasionally it slips my mind for a few minutes that I am in Africa. But tonight as I write this blog outdoors (I have to go outdoors to get a wireless signal), it's almost completely dark, and there are torches lit on boats out in the lake as far as I can see - that has not happened before. I do not think those are fishing boats, or at least they are not being used for fishing in the dark. Also someone nearby is playing a drum by hand, while girls sing along. I think perhaps it is a special day. One of the Rwandans said it was Icheza (but I will have to look that up!)